Author:       Donna VanLiere

Publisher:    St. Martin’s Press

ISBN:          978-0-312-38051-9

Website:      http://www.donnavanliere.com/

Type:         Non-Fiction:Memoir/Spiritual

Pages:        211 Hardback

Purchase:    $14.93 @ Amazon.com (HERE)

The Story

This is Donna’s story about finding God’s grace in her life.  It’s Donna’s story from childhood to motherhood.  This memoir is a beautiful story that I have found is best told in this moving short film below.  There are no words that I can write that can more accurately or beautifully describe this book.  I highly encourage you to take a few minutes for yourself and watch it…

The Review

One of my life-long best friends is adopted.  I recall us searching for and eventually finding her birth-mother only to discover that the genetics that she shared with them could never measure up to the love that she shared with her true family… the one that she was adopted into. 

I also know several mothers who have adopted their children.  They have always known and truly believe that their children were destined to be theirs.  I couldn’t agree more and these are some of the best  mothers I know. 

Donna VanLiere had every hope and every dream of a certain life and becoming a mother.  After a childhood that included sexual abuse, she meets the man of her dreams and is fortunate enough to marry him.  Her story takes the reader from the childhood dreams to her adult dreams of having children with her husband, Troy (who, by the way… sounds absolutely wonderful).  However, after a tragic miscarriage, the couple is inexplicably faced with infertility.  She questions God and tries to find his grace in her life as she craves from the depths of her soul to be blessed with children.  Eventually, she does find that grace in the form of three beautiful children, two adopted from China and one from Guatemala.  But, more than God’s wonderful grace in these three children, she finds peace and grace in the entirety of her life.  How she discovers it, she shares with the readers of this heartfelt book.  I couldn’t be more grateful for her moving words.

Here are some of the great quotes from the book to give you an idea of just how good this book is:

“… The author of Ecclesiastes says God has set eternity in our hearts.  Our lineage is both human and divine, making us not the presumed earthlings on a spiritual jaunt but rather spiritual beings on a human journey.”

“… Augustine said God gives where he finds empty hands.  My hands were full of plans and dreams that I had determined to make happen.  I had no need for God or his help so I had no need for grace.  I was still too young to comprehend that someday my strength would be inadequate and if I wasn’t careful I’d miss the great understanding of that.”

“… The Boyfriend’s parents didn’t realize that it’s our human plight to be imperfect and that it’s right there in that imperfection that we receive grace, and that’s how we come to know God better.”

“Every moment we walk this earth, I believe our soul is guiding us toward something greater, something beyond ourselves, while our reasoning pulls us back into something less, building upon the sands of that Leo Tolstoy called the unstable house of brief, illusive life.  The conflict always remains but the choice is ours.”

“I realize now that the eloquent, yet sometimes brutally honest language of the arts has a way of penetrating the deepest places of our soul.”

“The person who emerges from the pain is either stronger for it or strangled by it.”

“The problem with unfulfilled dreams is that they give us tunnel vision; we focus on ourselves, and that can be a depressing and discouraging place to look.  Self-absorption is abusive, unforgiving, critical, intolerable, disappointed, angry, shameful, and always impatient.”

“She wasn’t born through my body but in my heart – where grace is always birthed.”    

On Sher’s “Out of Ten Scale:”

I needed this book at this stage in my life!  Donna’s story is one that brought me inspiration and reminded me that I have to be open to God’s grace in my life in whatever form it is given to me.  It may not be the way that I envisioned it and planned it, but His plan for me is greater than I can ever dream up myself.  I pray for patience so much and it’s still one of the biggest hurdles I face.  I know that God is working on me and is preparing me for the greatness that will be the legacy of my life.  This book helped remind me of that.  For the genre Non-Fiction:Memoir/Spiritual, I am going to rate this book a 9 OUT OF 10. 

I would like to thank Julie H. of FSB Associates for providing me this EXCELLENT book for review and I would especially like to thank Donna VanLiere for writing it!

Also, I located a giveaway of this book at this neat blog (never been there until now) that you should check out: mis(h)takes.  It’s only open until April 27th, so scoot over there now and enter.

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